When It Don't Come Easy

Author: enigmaticblue

Rating: PG-13

Archive: If you already have my stuff, if not please ask.

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, and I'm certainly not making any money off them, more's the pity.

Summary: Going rapidly AU during the events of Entropy in BtVS S6, Spike makes a couple of wishes that will change everything. What is Buffy going to do when presented with a very different Spike—who doesn't feel quite the same way about her anymore?

A/N: This fic presupposes my short stories, The Lonely Hearts Club and The Way to a Poet's Heart. You don't have to have read those; just know that in this 'verse Spike and Tara have become pretty good friends.

Chapter 19: A New Start

"...So come on now,/I can almost see/that place/on a distant shore./And courage is a weapon we must use/to find some life you can't refuse./We don't need a lot of money./We'll be sleeping on the beach,/keeping oceans within reach./(Whatever private oceans we can conjure up for free.)/I will stumble there with you/and you'll be laughing close with me,/trying not to make a scene/etcetera. Whatever. I guess all I really mean/is we're gonna be alright./Yeah, we're gonna be alright./You can close your eyes tonight,/'cause we're gonna be alright./All that I can see is your eyes./Close your eyes." ~Over the Rhine, "Etcetera, Whatever"

Spike arrived on schedule but hesitated to use the front door. Dawn had told him that Giles was coming back to town, therefore he'd planned on avoiding the Summers' residence, but Buffy had called earlier to invite him to go out on patrol.

That had been a little weird. Spike wasn't used to Buffy calling him to issue an invitation to do anything.

There was a part of him that wanted to say, "Sod it," and belligerently face whatever the Watcher wanted to throw at him. There was another part of him that wanted to avoid the man, because he had no desire to make things any harder on Buffy.

Angry with himself for being such a wanker, Spike marched up to the front door and knocked loudly. Squaring his shoulders, he waited for the fireworks to begin. What he got instead was Buffy. "Hi!" she said cheerfully. "Come on in."

Spike raised an eyebrow and entered. "Where's your Watcher?"

"Having dinner with Anya," Buffy replied. "He says it's shoptalk, but I'm choosing not to think about it too much."

He smirked. It looked like he might get off easy after all; if Rupert was dating a vengeance demon, he couldn't argue too much about Buffy seeing a vampire. At least in theory.

"Stop it," Buffy scolded him.

Spike affected a hurt look. "Stop what?"

"Whatever it is you're thinking. It's not happening."

Spike smirked. "I was just thinking that he couldn't give you too hard a time for patrolling with me then."

"Is that what we're going to call it?" Buffy asked, grabbing her jacket.

Spike shrugged. "We can call it whatever you want. Where's Dawn?"

"Out with Eric," Buffy replied. "Her curfew is midnight tonight, so I need to be back by then."

Spike didn't have a problem with that. While he might have liked to stay out all night as they'd done in the past, this was worlds better than what she'd given him before. This was—

Well, it was like they were really dating.

"Yeah, alright," Spike replied. "I don't have a problem with that."

"Thanks." Buffy graced him with another smile as she locked up behind her. "I promised Dawn I wouldn't disappear again."

Spike lit a cigarette with a practiced gesture and a sigh of relief. He'd missed smoking, and Tara wouldn't let him do it in the apartment. "She wrangled the same promise out of me."

Buffy looked up at the sky. "I really let her down last year, you know? I mean, it was hard to come back and all of that. Nothing felt like it mattered, but I wish I hadn't let Dawn down so badly."

"You live and learn," Spike replied. "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself, luv. It's not like you've ever raised a teen before."

Buffy glanced over at him. "You can say that after the way I treated you?"

Spike was still a little surprised at her attitude; maybe she'd been different with William, but he'd been human then. "You keep saying that."

"Saying what?"

"Acting like how you treated me before was wrong," Spike said. "Like you feel bad about it."

Buffy raised her eyebrows. "You don't remember what you said to me?" When Spike looked confused, she amended, "What William said to me."

"Sure, but—"

"William said that I treated you like you were stupid, unless I wanted to believe otherwise." Buffy made a face. "He was angry at me."

"I was pretty brassed off on several occasions," Spike said. "I didn't see you taking that into consideration."

"That's because I wasn't thinking of you as having actual feelings," Buffy admitted candidly. "I used you, Spike. I told you that when I broke things off, but I didn't understand then."

"Understand what?"

"That you really did love me."

Spike was silent, still blown away by her acknowledgement. "Yeah."

"So, you're going to stay with Tara?" Buffy asked, changing the subject.

"Don't know what else to do," he said. "She still wants me there, and with Red leaving for England in the summer, it's not like she's got someone else to help her pay the rent."

Buffy nodded, satisfied. "Good."

"Someone to keep an eye on me, huh?" Spike asked wryly.

Buffy shook her head. "Not so much that as the fact that it's good that you have a friend. I won't lie to you, Spike. The whole 'obsessed' thing kind of freaked me out."

Spike thought he understood now the way he wouldn't have before. He'd been fixated on Drusilla, but she had demanded that sort of attention; Buffy didn't need it, and she had her own life to deal with. Buffy had Dawn—they both did—and work and school and a hundred other things that demanded her attention from day to day. Spike—well, now Spike had Tara, and he was beginning to think about other things that might keep him busy.

That was something else William had taught him—that he needed to be his own man, whether or not he was in love. Spike had always had more passion than one cause could absorb, even when that cause was the Slayer.

"Where are we going from here, Buffy?" Spike asked softly, knowing that his words held an echo of the first night they'd kissed.

"I don't know," she said. "I think as long as we're both on the same side, we can figure it out as we go." Buffy gave him a hard look. "You haven't changed your mind about that, have you?"

"About what?" Spike asked.

"Eating people."

"No," he said, looking her right in the eye. "I don't break my promises, Buffy. I told you, I don't hurt the people that I love."

Buffy nodded, her eyes thoughtful. "I believe that."

Spike hid his hurt, wishing that she'd been able to give him a little more than that. He supposed he ought to be grateful that she'd at least acknowledged that his love for her was real, but it still felt as though she was holding back something of herself.

It made it harder to trust that this relationship wasn't going to end just as badly this time around.

~~~~~

"William turned up again, huh?" Eric asked.

Dawn had told him as much, but she'd left out most of the details, seeing as how he had no idea about vampires and demons. After giving him the broad outline, leaving out the fact that William had shown up as a vampire—again—she'd swiftly changed the subject. Apparently, Eric was bringing it up again. "Yeah, a couple of days ago."

"The same or different?"

Dawn wasn't quite sure how to respond. "A little bit of both," she finally said cautiously. "He just had to get some things sorted out."

Eric nodded. "That's good. I mean, I know that there have been a lot of disappearances around here, so it's good that he turned up again."

"Yeah," Dawn said. "I guess he was just worried about what Buffy would say since he was out of town for a few days."

Eric made a noncommittal sound. "How are you with all of this?"

"Now that he's back?" Dawn asked. "I'm fine. It's good, Eric."

"Because you were pretty down there for a while."

"It was just the idea that he wouldn't be around again," Dawn said. "I mean, I've lost enough people, and William was kind of an older brother. He was around a lot last summer."

"What happened last summer?" Eric asked curiously.

Dawn sighed, hating this part of their relationship. There was really no way to explain the truth, though—not without giving him all the gory details.

It wasn't really vampires and demons, or the fact that her sister was the Slayer, that discouraged Dawn from ever revealing what her life was actually like. The real fear entered when she thought about explaining the fact that she had only been in existence two years—or two billion, depending on how you thought about it.

Eric was really nice, and there was no way that Dawn wanted to do anything to scare him off at this stage of the game. "Buffy got sick," she explained. "Sp—William was the one who really stuck around."

Eric nodded. "I have an uncle like that," he said mildly. "Dad's brother. I was named for him, you know."

"Really?" Dawn asked, glad that the conversation had turned to his past rather than hers. "Is he still around?"

"He's a journalist," Eric said. "He's always off chasing some war or something, but when he comes to visit, he always brings the coolest presents."

"I'll bet," Dawn said.

Eric hesitated, then said, "So, I get it, you know? I mean, there was this one time when he dropped off the radar for three months while he was down in South America. Everybody thought he'd been killed, but it turned out he was just chasing a big story and couldn't contact anybody."

Dawn nodded, glad that Eric had waited to tell her that until after Spike had shown up. She probably would have been unreasonably angry at him before, if only because his mysterious uncle was still alive, but now that everything was going to be okay, she was grateful for his empathy.

"Thanks."

He gave her a startled look. "For what?"

"For being there," Dawn replied. "You helped me not to go crazy this last week."

"It was my pleasure," Eric said, reaching for her hand.

Dawn let him entwine his fingers with hers, and she leaned into his shoulder as they walked along, feeling safe and warm and young.

It wasn't often that Dawn got to feel normal, but this was one of those moments.

She just wished she could tell Eric what it meant to her to have him there.

~~~~~

Giles leaned across the table to wipe a bit of sauce from Anya's chin. "You had something—just there."

Anya smiled. "You could have gotten it off some other way."

Giles glanced around the restaurant. It was busy tonight, and the atmosphere was rather noisy, otherwise he might have tried a different technique as she suggested. "I'm sure I could work on that."

Anya smiled wistfully. "You're not coming back to Sunnydale, are you?"

"I don't know," he said. "Buffy and the others seem to be doing well, and my job with the Council requires my presence in England—or in Europe at the very least. I care for you a great deal, but—"

She nodded, cutting him off. "I know. I was thinking that I might relocate. As long as I can keep teleporting, I could work from anywhere."

Giles nodded. "You could," he said neutrally, not wanting to affect her decision one way or another.

"I enjoy working at the Magic Box," Anya continued, "but I don't know that I want to work there forever. Staying in Sunnydale isn't as important to me as it used to be."

Giles was a little surprised by that, but he couldn't blame Anya. Even though she seemed to have come to terms with Xander leaving her, he could imagine that it would be difficult to remain here, where memories pressed in all around. "I don't want you to feel as though you have to stay," he said. "Whatever you need to do, I'll fully support your decision."

"Thank you," Anya replied, her eyes warm. Her expression told him that he'd just offered her something precious, although Giles wasn't quite sure what that might be. "I don't need to make a decision right away. It's a big step."

"It's certainly not something you want to rush into," Giles replied, thinking of how his quick decision to leave Sunnydale had nearly been disastrous. At this point, looking back, he could just imagine how many other things might have gone wrong, how easy it would have been to lose Buffy altogether.

Giles had hoped that his leaving would shock her out of her apathy, and perhaps it had. Or, perhaps it had only been the passage of time that had awoken Buffy to her responsibilities, to the joy that life had to offer. His departure might have done nothing more than to make it harder on her in the long run.

He supposed that he would never know, and could only be grateful that Buffy had eventually come around.

Perhaps it had worked out for the best, since Giles didn't think he'd have had this relationship with Anya had he remained in Sunnydale.

Of course, perhaps if he'd remained in Sunnydale, Anya wouldn't have felt the need to become a vengeance demon again.

As though she'd read his mind, Anya smiled at him. "Sometimes things turn out for the best," she observed. "I think they might have this time."

Giles certainly hoped so.

~~~~~

Xander leaned up against the bar, next to Willow. "So, you guys are back together?"

"Sort of," Willow said. "I mean, we're trying to make the dating thing work, but we're not planning on living together any time soon. Things are good right now, though."

"And England?" he asked. "You really okay with going, Will? Because you were pretty upset there for a while."

Willow shook her head. "I think it's the right thing to do. I'm beginning to understand how much I don't know, and if I really want to help Buffy and make a difference, I need to change that."

"They say that knowing you don't know everything is the beginning of wisdom," Xander teased with a grin.

Willow gave him a mock-glare and turned the tables. "How was your lunch with—Melanie, right?"

"It was fun," Xander said. "She gave me her number, so I might call her sometime."

"Ready to get back up on the horse?" Willow asked, her eyes full of sympathy.

Xander shook his head. "I don't know, Will. I won't lie to you; it still hurts. When I walk past the Magic Box and think about how bad I screwed everything up..." He trailed off. "I'm not ready for anything serious, but this doesn't have to be. It could just be fun."

Willow raised an eyebrow. "Dating a single mom?"

Xander's face softened. "Yeah, well, he's a pretty cute kid."

"Who's pretty cute?" Buffy asked, popping up at Xander's elbow.

"Xander had a date yesterday," Willow said. "I told you about it."

"Oh, right," Buffy said, a sly look in her eyes. "How was it?"

"It was good," he said defensively. "She laughed at my jokes, which is more than I can say for some people."

Buffy gave him a pitying look. "That's because your jokes aren't always that funny, Xander."

Xander clutched his chest as though he'd been stabbed, and his antics caused both women to laugh. "Go ahead and laugh," he said. "I know you have to be special to understand my brand of humor." When Willow and Buffy exchanged looks, he groaned. "Please, don't. I know I walked right into that one."

"We won't rub it in," Willow said soothingly.

"So, is the bleached wonder coming tonight?" Xander asked, trying to sound as though he didn't care. Willow had already read him the riot act about letting Buffy date whomever she wanted, and how if he didn't want to alienate the Slayer, he'd make nice with the vampire.

Xander couldn't promise "nice," but he thought he might be able to manage civil.

"He should be here pretty soon," Buffy said craning her neck. "He was walking Tara over, and then we're supposed to go on patrol."

"You guys are making that a nightly habit," Willow teased.

Buffy flushed. "Yeah, well, it's nice to be able to talk to someone while I'm wandering the graveyards. I missed that."

Xander decided not to probe that too deeply, and when Willow leaned over and whispered, "I think Tara's going to come over tonight, and we'll look after Dawn," Xander decided to pretend that he didn't hear it.

There were some mental images he really didn't need.

~~~~~

"It's almost like nothing has changed," Tara observed as they walked towards the Bronze to meet the others.

Spike smirked. "Nothing except for those heavy drapes and the contents of your fridge, you mean."

Tara rolled her eyes. "Those kinds of things don't matter, not in the long run."

"And what does matter, luv?" he asked, sensing that her mood had turned serious, and that she had something she wanted to say.

Tara smiled. "This, right now. The fact that you're going to go to that poetry reading with me on Wednesday night to listen to me recite, when no one else knows about it. The fact that you're still the same man I trust."

Spike was deeply touched, although he had a hard time admitting it, even to Tara. She had always seemed to bring out the best in him. "The fact that no one else knows I'm going to a poetry reading with you is the same reason I'm going."

Tara laughed. "Come on, Spike. Buffy wouldn't care. She's seen William."

Spike shook his head. "She saw him, but she doesn't really know him, not like you do. Figure it'll be a while before she does."

"You love her," Tara pointed out. "And I know she has feelings for you. Why not tell her?"

"For the same reason that you weren't jumping into Willow's bed again," Spike said. "I don't quite trust whatever this is between us. Reckon I will in time, but she—she hasn't said it yet, you know?"

Tara nodded, understanding beginning to dawn. "I suppose that's why you wanted to keep the apartment."

"Makes more sense anyway," Spike pointed out. "Not that it matters for me, but you can use the extra cash, and I know Buffy's happier about Dawn visiting me if I'm not living in a crypt. Hell, she's probably happier visiting when it's a cozy little flat for two."

Tara glanced up at him. "That reminds me. Willow already asked me if I wanted to come over tonight. I probably won't be back until tomorrow sometime."

Spike raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, so?" he asked, not quite understanding her point. Tara snorted in laughter, and Spike suddenly got it, remembering that William had asked nearly the same thing. "Never mind."

They were standing outside the Bronze, and Tara placed a gentle hand on his arm. "Buffy's changed in the last months," she said. "She's in a better place now, and so are you. Don't let fear hold you back, William."

"I'm not afraid," Spike replied, troubled by her implication.

He'd never allowed fear to hold him back before; he wasn't going to start now.

~~~~~

"Anyway, Giles is staying for another week, I guess," Buffy said. "Did you know he's dating Anya? No one wants to tell Xander, and I'm really hoping that he doesn't find out by accident." She stopped, realizing that Spike wasn't really listening. "I also thought that maybe I would shave my head," Buffy said. "Because that look is in this fall."

"Huh?" Spike glanced over at her, startled. "You're going to what?"

Buffy sighed. "Never mind. I just wanted to see if you were listening, and you weren't."

"Sorry, luv," Spike replied. "Was just thinking about something."

"Penny?"

"Just something Tara said to me is all," he replied. "Nothing important."

Buffy wasn't quite sure what to say. She could feel a distance there between them; it had sprung up when he'd first become human again, and she didn't think that his getting turned had bridged the gap. If anything, it only made it worse.

Spike had loved her, but she didn't know if he still felt the same way. He had changed.

"You want to call it a night?" Spike suddenly asked, breaking the silence that hung between them. "There's nothing out."

"Sure," Buffy replied. "Do you want to walk me home, or..."

"My place is available," Spike said, his blue eyes serious. "If you want."

Want had never been a problem with them, Buffy thought, although she didn't say it aloud. "That would be great."

He was still silent as they got closer to his apartment building, and Buffy suddenly wondered if this was enough—if their relationship would ever really work. Maybe she was crazy—if the very idea of a Slayer and a vampire was impossible, maybe the idea of her and Spike was ten times worse.

They had tried to kill each other; they'd hurt each other in ways no one else would ever match.

But Buffy didn't want to let him go. She'd experienced life without him, and it didn't suit her.

Spike unlocked the door and held it open for her. Buffy murmured her thanks as she passed inside, waiting for the moment when everything clicked for them again. Waiting for the moment when the whole world faded away and left the two of them alone.

Buffy couldn't help but wonder if it would ever be like that again.

Spike was looking at her, as though waiting for her to say or do something. She realized that he was waiting for her to indicate what she wanted, because she had always been the one to come to him. The few times that he'd approached her, that he'd asked her to discuss their relationship, she'd turned him down flat. Buffy had always insisted on calling the shots, and on setting the pace.

How on earth had she ever thought that they could make this work after everything that had happened? At least, not without changing things up a bit.

"I trust you."

Buffy watched as those three words sank into him, as he processed her meaning and the intent behind them, as he realized that she spoke the truth. She'd always found it difficult to use the 'l'-word, but she could give him this much right now. The other feelings were there, and the words would come in time, but Buffy couldn't bring herself to say them right now. Not with the distance between them. As she watched Spike's eyes light up, however, Buffy knew that she'd done the right thing.

Spike's hand caressed her face, as though he was memorizing her features, this moment. Buffy reached out to him, to pull him closer, but he gave a quick shake of his head. "No. Let me."

And Buffy gave up; she surrendered, allowed him to lead, to set the pace. Time slowed to a crawl as Spike forced her to go slow—when normally their clothing couldn't be removed quickly enough, tonight everything was done at the slowest of speeds.

Spike drove her crazy in the best possible way.

Later—much later—when they finally made it to his bed, when he was on top of her, and inside of her, and completing her, Buffy wondered why she'd ever doubted that they would make this work. It would never be easy, but that didn't mean that it wasn't worth doing.

"I love you," he whispered, as the overwhelming crescendo of desire receded, leaving them both gasping for breath.

Buffy touched his lips with hers in a gentle caress. "I know you do." And, because it was true, because something had been loosed during their lovemaking, she said, "I love you, too."